The indissolubility of marriage is one thing; the severance of the
ties of the flesh is another. The longer I live the more I have become
convinced that divorce is a scourge. We must have courage to admit that
individual cases ought to be considered of no account, the interest of
the community must alone be considered. The higher the value that is set
on marriage the better will society become. The marriage tie has become
something excessively fragile, and as a result society possesses no
solidity. The Church is right. But who among us does not stumble, and
which of us does not disregard the fact that Divine law is essentially a
human law?
The count received at Nice the seconds of the Prince of Coburg, to whom
the Court of Francis Joseph had relegated this duty. The duel brought
the two adversaries face to face in the Cavalry Riding School at Vienna
in February, 1898. The lieutenant fired twice in the air, and twice
the general fired at the lieutenant. They were then handed swords. The
lieutenant continued to treat the general with respect and touched him
lightly on the right hand.
He thus added to the feelings of hatred which the prince already had
towards him. Three weeks later he was implicated in that abominable
story of the forged bills of exchange which was entirely an invention,
and to which, later, the Reichsrath accorded full justice.
The impossible judgment which pretended to dishonour one of the most
noble of men would never have been pronounced if I had been called as a
witness.
But my enemies hastened to have me incarcerated. My evidence was
suppressed and the count was condemned.
A man still lives, silent and hidden, who, if I reckon rightly, must be
seventy-five years old. I write these lines hoping that he will be able
to read them before he disappears finally from the world.
Now, when my memory invokes him, I see him standing at the threshold of
the madhouse into which his hatred had caused me to be thrown, and I see
him at the gate of the prison where he had caused Count Geza Mattachich
to be confined. But I should like him to know that his victims have
pardoned him. They could, to-day, demand satisfaction from Austrian
justice, now freed from the constraints of former years. His victims
will spare him. Let Him who will judge us all, judge this old man. I do
not even know who were the instruments of his vengeance.
Not long since in Vienna a poor creature three-parts blind and with one
foot in the grave was pointed out to me, and I heard the name of the
Jewish lawyer, now repudiated by all that is estimable in Jewry in
Austria, who was the agent, the instigator, and the counsellor of the
implacable hatred which determined on my destruction.
I looked back at him thinking that this same personage, so stubborn in
his system of police severity, and in his service of the abuse of power,
had also armed the hand of the woman who killed my son....
And greatly moved, I asked myself:
"Have they understood?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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